All over the world, cities are facing challenges. How can we make a success out of the endeavour to develop and keep the urban space as a common space for society, even during times when it is capitalized and privatized? What is the part played by art, culture, architecture, self-organized action and activism?

During the past few years, artists, architects, philosophers, urbanists and activists from seven different European cities tackled these aspects within the project ACTOPOLIS | The Art of Action. The exhibition sets forth examples of projects from Ankara/Mardin, Athens, Bucharest, Belgrade, Oberhausen, Sarajevo and Zagreb. The materials coming from the over 45 individual projects make up a substantial portfolio of possibilities for transforming and improving the cities we live in. The exhibition (design NODE, Berlin – Oslo and SSW Architekten, Berlin) offers inspiration and concrete impulses to act.

With the exhibition traveling to Izmir a new city joined the ACTOPOLIS network! Apart from the exhibition at the Chamber of Architects, the "Flying Carpet Tour" programme is collecting stories in public spaces throughout Izmir. More information and upates about the exhibition here. http://blog.goethe.de/actopolis | www.goethe.deExhibition: November 15th - November 28th 2017 Opening: November 15th

For now, Thessaloniki will be the last stop of the Actopolis touring exhibition. Curator Lydia Chatziiakovou was putting together a list of artists and projects that will be showcased together with the touring Actopolis exhibits in Thessaloniki's Old Slaughterhouse. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Municipality of Thessaloniki. Artists and projects exclusively presented in the Actopolis Thessaloniki exhibition: Efthimis Theou / Elektra Aggelopoulou, Eric Ellingsen, Swaantje Güntzel / Jan Phillip Scheibe, Greece Communitere, Andrea Iten, Practise(in)Cognition, Lynn Peemoeller. www.goethe.de | www.facebook.com/events Exhibition: November 24th - December 6th 2017 Opening: November 24th 2017, 7pm

Within the „Region l Architecture for All Work Group meeting” in Dublin | 13th and 14th November 2017

Vassilis Sgoutas, past president of UIA, chairperson of the final jury for the Friendly and Inclusive Spaces Awards, and the person who as UIA president in 1999 established both the Architecture for All and the Architecture and Children Work Programmes will engage “in conversation” with Irish architect and journalist Shane O’Toole about his book „A Journey with the Architects of the World”, the many topics it covers and the role of UIA, hopefully culminating in a lively dialogue with Irish architects and members of AfA WP.

From September 21-23. the DIST center at Aalborg University in Copenhagen will host a conference on experimental urban development in cooperation with GivRum. The purpose of the conference is to gather researchers, planners, developers and activists to a three day exploration of how we can create more liveable and sustainable cities through experimental urban development. The conference is framed by the international City Link festival, which is this year happening in the Sydhavn neighborhood in Copenhagen. The festival theme is “building bridges” and works with how to sustain and develop communities in the area.

September 21: Activists and researchers present and reflect on protest actions, art projects and cultural spaces from Hamburg that are connected to the local right to the city network (Recht auf Stadt). Together they will illustrate that it’s often artists, activists and cultural producers who open up laboratories in the city and carry out experiments in public space for co-creation, self-organization and alternative community life.

This way they contribute to the liveability of cities, foster local democracy and reinforce urban resilience. This part of the conference is organized and presented by Michael Ziehl, Carsten Rabe and Till Haupt, editors of “City Linkage: Art and Culture Fostering Urban Futures”. The publication bases on events, lectures and exhibitions of the City Link Festival 2014 in Hamburg.

From 14 September 2017 to 14 January 2018, arc en rêve centre d’architecture presents the exhibition “infidélités créatives TOPOTEK 1” devoted to the Berlin-based landscape design studio TOPOTEK 1. The exhibition takes place in the stimulating context of a contemporary urban society that is increasingly eager to embrace nature. In the framework of the numerous projects they have carried out in Europe and Asia, the TOPOTEK 1 landscape designers invariably draw their inspiration from local cultural and historic references. They are also interested in other aspects linked to global urban diversity, which they include in their creations.

The UIA world congresses are a forum for professional and cultural exchange among all the world's architects, and bring together thousands of participants from around the globe. Each event focuses on a pertinent theme, developed by eminent personalities from the international architectural, planning, and construction fields. Debates, exhibitions, tours and festivals make them the perfect meeting place for colleagues and friends, and students of architecture are always welcome.With Keynote speeches and presentations on the key issues of today’s architecture delivered by internationally renowned architects and global leaders. Keynote Forum

Royal Institute of British Architects RIBA 66 Portland Place London, W1B 1AD

JSWD are involved in a wide range of building projects—from a school to a research institute, from a residential building to a museum—and each project is conceived from scratch. One aspect dominates all finished buildings, as well as those currently under construction: they show an intense involvement with the façade, the “skin” of the building, which connects inside and outside and gives the houses a unique character. The exhibition shows examples of prominent building envelopes.

Today about 60% of the Viennese population live in municipally built, owned or managed housing and the city clearly controls its housing market. This is a different condition than exists in the United States where, in most cases, the private market is the provider of housing and is relied upon even to rehabilitate existing neighborhoods and create new communities.

To expand this architectural and urban discussion, the curators invited Vancouver and Vienna based artists and cultural researchers Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber to look at these communal spaces and concepts and speculate on how they resonate within artistic and cultural practices. Their selection of art projects and public works will accompany, reflect upon, and contextualize the selected examples and also shape the format of the exhibition and publication.

The Vienna Model is curated by Wolfgang Förster and William Menking, and is brought to Vancouver on the initiative of Urban Subjects (Sabine Bitter, Jeff Derksen, Helmut Weber), an artist collective based in both Vancouver and Vienna.

Examples from Elsewhere: Copenhagen and Indianapolis

As Boston begins thinking strategically about its development throughout the 21st century, cities around the world provide case studies for how to achieve excellent outcomes in urban design and community building.

Space is experienced not only visually, but with all the senses. Despite this, the design and reception of architecture often barely take haptic, acoustic, and osmic perceptions into account. Consequently, in the architecture discipline there is no continuous discourse on the topic of spatial perception. GAM.13 Spatial Expeditions seeks to fill this gap. The method of the expedition enables an experimental approach and provides the opportunity to gain new insights and perspectives with regard to built space. It explores perceptual techniques from the fields of architecture, the visual arts, music, dance and other related disciplines. GAM.13 therefore represents an expedition into experimental architecture and the unexplored aspects of built space.

All over the world, cities are facing challenges. How can we make a success out of the endeavour to develop and keep the urban space as a common space for society, even during times when it is capitalized and privatized? What is the part played by art, culture, architecture, self-organized action and activism?

During the past few years, artists, architects, philosophers, urbanists and activists from seven different European cities tackled these aspects within the project ACTOPOLIS | The Art of Action. The exhibition sets forth examples of projects from Ankara/Mardin, Athens, Bucharest, Belgrade, Oberhausen, Sarajevo and Zagreb. The materials coming from the over 45 individual projects make up a substantial portfolio of possibilities for transforming and improving the cities we live in. The exhibition (design NODE, Berlin – Oslo and SSW Architekten, Berlin) offers inspiration and concrete impulses to act.